


Our Carnival of Dreams

by ValloryRussups



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Tom isn't fluffy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:44:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValloryRussups/pseuds/ValloryRussups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry's scar vanishes and a boy named Tom Riddle appears, the Weasleys adopt both the boys, who soak in the wizards' culture. As they grow up, their paths diverge: Harry dreams of expanding the influence of the Old Ways magic, while Tom forges friendships with Dark purebloods. Then, Voldemort shatters the idyll. GreyHarry, DarkTom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Trouble Is a Ton.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you for clicking on this, and there are a few of things I want to clarify first:
> 
> 1) The fic will be slow-moving. While I can promise a lot of plot and (hopefully) exciting plot twists, I will be largely concentrating on the culture and traditions of wizards. Yes, yes, those two things that Rowling didn't really elaborate on in her series.
> 
> 2) NOT A TOM-REDEMPTION STORY! He's Dark. He'll always be Dark. He's not suddenly a fluffy bunny because he's near Harry or something.
> 
> 3) Voldemort STILL exists.
> 
> 4) It starts out rather light in nature, but gets darker as the plot advances and years pass.

Aunt Petunia always berated Harry for the freakish accidents he caused. Unnatural, she would call both him and them. Abnormal.

Whenever he wished very, very hard, and made objects fly, flowers bloom, items change colour, or anything else thought to be impossible, she would shriek at him and go off into long angry rants, all describing in nauseating detail how aberrant his existence was, that he should strain his mind and suppress all those occurrences if he wanted to keep living in Privet Drive...

She would remember it all: a teacher’s blue wig, Harry’s hair with a mind of it’s own, weeds plucking themselves out, leftovers vanishing from the plates before the steadily trickling from the tap water could touch them-

All of it paled in comparison to a naked boy snoring softly next to him.

Harry propped up on his elbows to observe him better, attentive of the low ceiling in his tiny cupboard. His head had fallen victim of quite a few bumps from it in his lifetime.

The boy looked his age, maybe a year or two older, but no more. Taller than Harry, that’s for sure, with pitch black hair and very pale skin, so pasty it shone in the darkness of the cupboard, illuminated by the dim light of an old wall sconce merely inches away from Harry’s head. The boy’s eyes were closed, so the eye colour remained a mystery, but the lashes and eyebrows were of the same shade as the shiny hair. Also, his features held this promise of greater beauty that would come with age, something almost aristocratic in appearance, like a trait of nobles in those pseudo-historical soap operas Aunt Petunia watched after a long, tiring day of phoning friends and yelling at Harry.

_Should I wake him up?_ That was the first question. And then... _And what is he doing here, anyway?_

Well, if Harry woke him up, he would surely know, right?

Harry armed himself with courage, taking a deep breath, and leaned forward to hesitantly tap the boy on the shoulder with a single finger.

“Hey, wake up! You hear me? Wake up!” he urged softly, with a shifty glance in the direction of the door. What would his Aunt and Uncle say? Nothing good, that’s for certain. He had to be careful. As silent as a mouse, as a grave, even.

The boy stirred, and his eyelashes fluttered like a butterfly’s wings, long and pretty, but after shifting lazily, he just settled comfortably with his head on Harry’s knees. A vein pulsed on Harry’s small, scrunched up forehead when his urgings went ignored. The gall! Harry didn’t have a clock or a wristwatch to follow the time, so who knew if it was  morning already and if in a mere second he would hear Aunt Petunia banging on the door, screeching at him to make breakfast, and Vernon’s loud footsteps echoing to the loo, and Dudley stampeding to the kitchen-

“You are hurting me, nitwit,” an irritated hiss shattered Harry’s introspection. The boy looked down only to freeze under the beam of annoyance projected by claret eyes. That mysterious bloke wasn’t a jolly chap, that’s for sure.

“Who are you?” Harry blurted, shaking the other’s shoulder to push him to answer faster. In reply he got a painful, strong shove which made him wince and rub the abused area of flesh that took the brunt, all the while glaring accusingly at the irate boy whose glowers speared him with razor-sharp intensity.

“Imbecile,” the claret-eyed boy spat and, after acknowledging his naked state as if it were normalcy with a fleeting glance down, assumed a straight-backed, royal position smack in the middle of the cupboard, sitting like a king about to bestow a greatest gift with his explanation. “I have been with you for your entire pitiful existence, and you don’t even have the decency of recognition.”

Harry was getting scared. And alarmed. If he lounged for the door now, would the stranger catch him in time? Because, surely, this loon was dangerous. Being with Harry all his lifetime? Ha, as if. Always alone, always lonely – that was the motto enforced on Harry by his dear, loving family.

“I’m not daft,” Harry retorted angrily and put his arms over his chest, huffing. He ignored a snort that accompanied his statement. “I’d have noticed something. I mean, you can’t miss a person!”

“You apparently did,” the stranger snapped in reply. He had a weird, too smooth voice, unnaturally cultured for someone so young, and it showed even when he was snapping and hurling insults. “My name is Tom Riddle.”

“Oh, we are already getting somewhere,” Harry muttered dryly, head hung low, before raising his eyes to meet Riddle’s. “I was getting tired of calling you ‘boy’ in my mind. Reminded me too much of Uncle Vernon.”

“This filthy muggle must learn to keep his hands to himself,” Riddle’s deadly whisper reverberated across the room.

“Muggle?” Harry latched onto the foreign word. “Ah, you meant ‘mugger’! Well, he does those drill thingies, but sometimes he talks about stealing money from this or that company or person, and he likes beating up people, just like Dudley, so I guess he can be called ‘mugger’, too.”

Riddle shot him a derisive look and grimaced, as if Harry’s very presence grated on his nerves and he couldn’t conceive of being near this idiocy embodied.

“I meant what I said,” he bit out, and his teeth clanked when he closed his mouth. The glower on his handsome face with high cheekbones and defined, manly lips intensified and shone like a killing beam.

Harry glanced at him dubiously but kept his mouth shut for once, remembering that they were a hair’s breadth away from the Dursleys.

“Whatever, Riddle.” He creased his forehead in thought and leaned in, his nose an inch away from Riddle’s, so close he could see the tint of black in the burgundy of the other boy’s eyes. “Why are you here? How? And why me? I don’t know anything about you! And what do you mean by ‘been here with you your entire life’? It can’t be true unless you are barking mad, and, yeah, you look kind of batty but-“

“ _Silence_!” The hiss, so powerful, so resonant, raised the tiny hairs on the back of Harry’s neck, at the same time as emerald-green eyes widened in awed shock at the hidden power behind a mere set of syllables and the menacing malice resurfacing on Riddle’s face. Dangerous. This boy was dangerous.

As abruptly as it came, the power settled. It was now merely lying about like a placid pet. Yet, the threat was still there, still prominent, and now Harry’s idle curiosity and wariness gave way to the prickling of true fear.

His face a serene mask, Riddle sighed peacefully only to swap this calm demeanour for the earlier annoyed one in a second.

“I don’t know,” he snapped and scowled, as if that lack of knowledge bothered him greatly, as if it were the first such occurrence in his entire lifetime and he didn’t know how to cope.

Harry’s eyebrows rose and in a bout of childish eagerness clashing with petulance, forgot all about the earlier terror and flung himself at Riddle, clinging to his arms.

“Tell me!” he shouted angrily and drove his nail, very long because his Aunt never bothered to cut them like she did Dudley’s, deep into Riddle’s skin, almost drawing blood, and watched with gleeful enjoyment that left himself gobsmacked the flicker of shock mixed with pain on Riddle’s face. “I have a right to know, don’t I? It’s in my bedroom you’ve turned up out of the blue-“

“Bedroom?” Riddle sneered and swept the cupboard, the cobwebs with colonies of spiders, the greying bed sheets, the meagre clothes strewn across the floor in tiny heaps, the school notebooks filled with chicken scrawl piled together in a precarious tower, the tin soldiers without limbs, and plush toys without eyes, and coloured cubes, all old and broken, with an unimpressed look. “This hole doesn’t deserve the title, I daresay.”

“This is where I live! Don’t call it-” Harry bellowed and nothing would have kept him from launching into an attack on the arrogantly sneering boy, except for-

“What is this noise, boy?” The footsteps, thunderous and dreadful, boomed over them. Harry froze, with his hand tearing at Riddle’s hair, before they traded looks – Tom’s full of anger and accusation, and Harry’s filled with panic. “Good folk’s trying to sleep ‘ere!”

“Vernon, dear, let me deal with it,” followed Aunt Petunia’s grating voice as she hurried after her husband. Harry face-palmed. “Go back to sleep, you have work in three hours-“

“No, pet, we’ve allowed the freak to do what he wants for far too long! What do I always tell you? We need to stomp this nonsense out of him before-“

But Harry wasn’t listening. His eyes were trained on Riddle, Riddle, who had suddenly gone very still and white, and whose claret eyes burst into brilliant red, radiant with hatred or fury, skewering the door with a powerful glare.

In a second though, Harry scowled and pulled Riddle closer to whisper into his ear, “What now, genius? Are you going to tell them ‘I don’t know’, too?” The viciousness in his own voice was unfamiliar for Harry, but the prat deserved it.

Riddle pushed Harry away and grabbed a corner of Harry’s thin quilt with fraying edges to cover himself.

“Hush,” he hissed tetchily and tied the corners of the quilt around his waist in a semblance of a long skirt. “Don’t worry, Potter.” He tossed Harry a meaningful look, with darkness lurking underneath the swirls of ruby. “I know what those abominations have been doing to us- _you_ all these years. Rest assured, they won’t go unpunished. They will pay for every single hit and insult they have dealt throughout ages!”

Harry paled. He had never let on his inner anguish at the Dursleys’ derision, nor had he spilt information of the abuse they showered him with. Not even to the teachers or the nurses or the random neighbours. He struggled through tiredness and pain, keeping up the facade of strength and health, all because he was afraid that if Dursley got themselves jailed for their treatment of him, he would either be saddled with another set of indifferent relatives or shipped to some orphanage in the middle of nowhere.

The Dursleys were a known threat. Some orphanage was not.

He had to ensure that Riddle’s mouth was sealed.

When Riddle turned away, fixing his stare on the door, the footsteps mere feet away, Harry gasped and snatched the boy’s arm, whispering hastily, “How? How do you know all this? Tell me! I’ve never beeped a word about the stuff they do to me, so how-“

“FREAK!” And the light switch clicked, and the door burst open, and Harry could only stare in mounting horror, numbed and still and white as bone, as the stout form of his uncle loomed in the doorway, with Aunt Petunia’s bony neck and face emerging just behind the man’s shoulder.

A second could last a lifetime – Harry was sure of that now.

He peered up at the adults from beneath his fluffy eyelashes, taking in their stiffening shoulders, the stricken expression splayed across Aunt Petunia’s face, the splotches of purple rage on Uncle Vernon’s beefy cheeks, his fingers balled into fists, and shuddered. He seemed to shrink, even as he felt Riddle’s recriminating gaze.

Harry feared them. He couldn’t suppress this terror, especially not now, when both adults looked about to strangle him.

“Um... Uncle Vernon?” Harry asked timidly with a blink as he raised his held out his hands in a gesture of peace and continued hurriedly, “I’m not sure what’s going on, too, but we can sit down and talk it out and-“

“BOY!” Harry flinched at the sound and suppressed the want to cover his ears. “I won’t stand for this funny business! Yesterday your headmaster summons us about some freakish roof-hopping, today it’s some boy in the cupboard, what’s tomorrow? Your blowing up the house?”

“No! It’s- I swear I haven’t done anything!” Harry cried out desperately, more at his aunt than uncle, for surely she would understand, she wouldn’t punish him, right? Right? “Not this time! Please, you have to hear me out! You have to-“

Uncle Vernon advance forward and his chins wobbled menacingly as he raised his hand to strike. “I’m done with you, boy. If you don’t drive _it_ out this second, I’ll-“

“You will do nothing,” Riddle’s voice cut through the man’s rant like a blade, unyielding and sharp. Everyone turned to look at him, Vernon with his hand still up in the air, never brought down.

“What?”

“It’s ‘excuse me’,” Riddle drawled, standing up with a smirk on his pale face. And Harry had to admire him: clad in a travesty of clothes, quite confused and, now that Harry looked into it, tired and strained, Riddle was still a sight to behold in all his imperious glory. “And you will not harm either of us. Never again.”

When a dangerous shade of puce threatened to stay on the man’s face forever, he croaked out, “I will do what I want with you freaks, God knows you don’t deserve anything better. This nonsense has to be plugged and done with! You hear me?”

“I tire of this useless discourse,” Tom interrupted and flashed a glance at Harry before setting it on Uncle Vernon. Harry just watched, gobsmacked and transfixed. “I am not Potter. I will not stand for this. Do you perhaps need an incentive to see things my way?”

Lately, Harry would wonder what would have happened if he stopped that burst of half-tired, but so lively, so happily singing magic, which filled up the space and air and thrummed under his skin and Tom’s, possessing a melody as spirited as the babble of a river creek. It was enchanting. It was deceptive.

So lulled into puzzled smiling Harry was that he missed the second Tom’s eyes flashed and lips tightened into a thin line, that his Aunt’s shriek was a hummer to his hearing, that the sight that greeted his vision, unfocused in the moments of introspection and unriddling his surprising emotions, mortified him when he looked up.

Uncle Vernon seemed peachy – at first.

When Harry’s eyes centred on the man’s skin, his eyesight traced slowly emerging lines which crawled to the surface with all the calmness of an approaching predator – veins and arteries, he heard those were called. He couldn’t believe how many of them Uncle Vernon’s body held: the previously evenly tanned skin was now nothing but a canvas of abstract painting with black lines crossing each other and creating a macabre design which made no sense but fascinated with its bizarreness.

“Vernon!” Aunt Petunia’s voice... It had never sounded so begging. So pleading. So human.

_Like mine is when I ask them to stop, and they never do, and there’s all this pain I have to feel, and they hurt me, more and more, and-_

Harry rejected this part of his mind.

“Please, Vernon, hold on, I’ll do something! Stay here, dear, I’m calling the ambulance-“

“It will not help,” Tom cut her off before the woman could rush to the phone and dial the number. Harry chanced a glance at him.

Claret eyes were fixed on him, never moving away, as if _Harry_ was a puzzle and his reactions and movements and facial expressions, for once, were more important than those of the Dursleys or anyone else. Tom’s face was blank, blank like one of the slates Harry drew on when he managed to sneak into Dudley’s room and filch a few, along with some crayons or, if he was really, really lucky, aquarelle paints.

Flattering. Gauging. Calculating. Tom’s gaze was all those things-

And there was a person dying.

“What do you mean with this, boy?” Aunt Petunia questioned sharply, drawing in a breath and advancing towards the cupboard. She wouldn’t be able to enter, as Harry was well aware after having tested it a few times, but with her eyes deranged and wide, hair frizzled, and bony hands clenched into fists, she made a horrifying picture. He scrambled away. “If I find out this is your doing, boy-“

“It is,” Tom interjected again. He loved doing that, Harry noticed. The smirk on his face spoke volumes. “And if you so much as raise a fist against one of us... Well, there are plenty of other people roving this earth, so you can find yourself another husband. No harm done here-“

“That man told me-” Aunt Petunia pursed her lips and Harry thought her expression and that special way her fists shook reminded him of the way she looked like before hitting him with a pan – lightly, of course. They couldn’t have rumours about child abuse running around, as Harry’s Uncle had once said. “-that you are harmless.” _Oh. She’s addressing me._ Harry blinked.

“That’s why we have agreed to this madness at all. To stamp all this nonsense out of you and give you a chance to be a normal person, too – that was a secondary goal. To make you different from _her_.” Her upper lip curled up in loathing. Harry wondered whom his Aunt was blathering on about. And how much you could resent a person to have a reaction like this. “We thought we could shape you into a citizen of worth, someone with a regular job in a shop or a cafe, after you’ve finished Stonewall High, of course. “

Her eyes hardened and she spat, and for Harry every word burned like acid.

“If we had known of this when we took you-“ She waved a hand at her husband, who stood as if petrified, veins and arteries still black and protruding, but not attempting to break the skin anymore, and whose eyes threatened to crawl out of the sockets.

Aunt Petunia’s voice shook. Tom smiled. Harry gulped.

“-if we had known of this, I swear I would have taken you straight to the orphanage, for all the freakish ‘wards’ and ‘protection’ and ‘blood’ that old foul man was droning on about in his letter!”

“Old man?” Tom asked sharply, standing up. “I want to talk to him. He is the one responsible for our- Potter’s placement here, correct?”

Petunia paused and tormented her lower lip, obviously torn between choices.

Harry couldn’t understand what was there to choose: her husband’s life was on the stake! However much he detested his Uncle sometimes, however much he shed bitter, lonely tears, he didn’t want a person to die in front of him. He wouldn’t let Tom!

_But Tom is a dangerous loon. What can you do to him?_ his mind whispered, and Harry scowled.

_I’m made of strong stuff. I’ll save Uncle Vernon, and Aunt Petunia, and Dudley, even though the git is still upstairs and has no reason at all to be up now... And then they’ll be grateful to me. They’ll love me. Dudley will treat me like a brother!_

The lives of those triumphant thoughts broke off seconds later, when Tom’s sharp nails pressed into the skin of Harry’s arm.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warned in an enraged hiss. “Believe me, your interruption will make everything only worse. I will handle this and, if everything goes without your stupidity thrown in the mix, in a week we will have better lives.” He paused before biting out, “Or I will, at least. Afterwards, you can go wherever you want and do whatever you wish.”

“You look ready to drop dead in a moment,” Harry mumbled. It was indeed true: obviously, holding Uncle Vernon under this weird petrifying thing took its toll and wasn’t very healthy, because the gleam in Tom’s eyes was sick, his skin acquired a pallor that rivalled marble-white, tremors ran down his body-

Did he care?

Aunt Petunia laughed, and Harry shuddered. It was nasty, the laugh. Even worse than the ones she shared with the wives of Uncle Vernon’s business partners when they gathered in the living room to discuss those batty womanly things Harry had never cared for and had never been allowed to hear anyway.

“Believe me, boy, if I manage to contact him we need never see each other again. At all,” she promised. Her eyes drilled into them, but her hand was soothingly running up and down Vernon’s arm, disregarding the disgusting lines of black, tender and gentle.

Tom curtly nodded.

“Good. If you do, I will cancel the spell. For now, I am allowing him to move, but not within a certain distance of us. If he dares break this boundary...”

“Fine,” she grit out and marched to the kitchen.


	2. Crossing the Bar

Petunia was scribbling a letter.

_Scratch, scratch_ , the biro moved and filled the silence with its sound.

In all her life, she had never thought this would go so far.

Keeping contact with her sister? All right, however much the thought depressed her, Lily had been her sister, and before the redhead’s death Petunia had secretly dropped letters in the post box once a year to stiffly boast of her marriage and pregnancy, only to sneer when she received a reply from one of those nasty screeching birds, and then endure hours of Vernon’s justified rants.

_Scratch, scratch._ The sound was getting furious.

Fostering her freakish sister’s child? God forbid, but she had been forced into that sacrifice. Unwillingly, she had taken him under her roof, and given him food and clothing Vernon was working so hard to buy, and allowed him his schooling, and pounded sense into his freakish brain – by back-breaking chores and punishments, but still.

_Scratch, scratch- snap!_ Her indignation was at fault when her hand slipped and crossed the sheet of expensive creamy paper, drawing a long line that went from the middle to the top.

Petunia pursed her lips. Her bony fingers clenched the biro as she slowly breathed out – a technique she had mastered in her youth when their parents bestowed another scrap more of love on Lily, not doing the same favour for her, and she had had to reign in her temper.

She was a master of her emotions now.

Or, more correctly, a master of not letting her emotions show.

The biro slipped out of her hand, but she didn’t notice: fear, oily and unpleasant, swelled in her, filled her to the brim of her being, compelled her to cover her scrunched-up face and feel the shudders that were running down her spine like pests that sometimes infested her house.

“God, what have I done to deserve it?” she muttered into the palm of her hand, pressed so close to her face Petunia could catch the whiff of lavender hand cream.

The question was moot. No God had ever given her an answer before, and obviously wasn’t going to do so now.

With Vernon at work, with all chores long done and redone, there wasn’t much she could occupy herself with. Duddy was at school, and so was one of the abominations.

The other, the recently appeared one...

Petunia exhaled once more. It didn’t help. The fear didn’t leave her together with her breath, and the shivers didn’t stop.

“What is it, Petunia?” a deceptively helpful and gentle voice asked. She refused to turn her head. “Do you need something? Another sheet of paper, maybe? This one looks a bit damaged to me.”

She wanted to scream. Wanted to cry. Wanted to curse the hell she used to call her life.

She frowned at herself and did none of the foolishness above. Petunia Dursley refused to be intimidated by a little freak, and in her house, no less!

“I will take care of it myself,” she said sharply, still not turning to the source of the voice. The freak was called- what was it, again? Bob? Ted? Something equally hideous and common. Ah, yes, Tom. The same name as the milk-boy’s, and this repugnant being would be lucky to get even this sort of career, because no one would want that _thing_ to work for them and generally be near them. “Why don’t you return to your room? Or play outside. Boys like playing outside, just look at my Dudders. He spends all his time in the park or with his fiends- ah, he’s such a wonderful, playful, friendly boy-“

Then again, she didn’t want Dudley mixing with those two freaks. She would finish the damn letter, and they would be gone.

Forever gone. She loved the notion.

“Then do so.” Footfalls and rustling clothes were followed by a handsome face that loomed into view moments later, when the thing took seat on the opposite of her, with only the table and the vase with artificial roses separating them. “I have been waiting for you to finish for too long. I want the letter written and sent. _Now._ ”

Petunia hated, hated that face. Too aristocratic, too manly beautiful, she wanted Dudders to have it, had always wanted a son with such a face and such a voice, but Vernon’s genes had spoiled it all, and, to be fair, she had never had Lily’s beauty and quiet grace, either. Maybe she wasn’t fated to be special in anything, not in beauty, not in dignity. Just like she wasn’t fated to have magic.

And so, she hated. It had become her refuge, this loathing.

“Who are you to tell me what to do, boy?” she bit out and suppressed the urge to smash the vase into the blank face.

“Your better, of course,” the thing replied smugly, cocking its head to a side. “You may disagree, but you must acknowledge it, ‘Aunt’. I am strong and magical, and you are weak and easily destroyed.”

“Why do you know these things at all?” The words stumbled out of her mouth without her consent, but when they did, she realised she wanted to know the answer. This sort of mindset for a child for frightening and unnatural. Even for _them_ , she believed. “You both are freaks, but the other boy is different. He doesn’t have this cynicism. Where do you come from? Who _are_ you?”

The thing’s face was as nonchalant as ever, but a tempest of emotions was brewing in its irises, dangerous and al-consuming. Petunia counted it as victory. She was able to rile the freak up, after all.

“My name is Tom Riddle. This is all you have to know.”

Petunia could smell the cold creeping into the kitchen, as biting as the one she felt in the frostiest days of winter, and for a second she imagined a breathtaking lattice of frostbite crawling over the table and the glass vase before shaking it off as her almost nonexistent imagination running wild.

The cold reminded her of the frostiest winter days. Of the times she needed to get a newspaper from the mail box or fetch some salt from her next-door neighbour and disregarded her outer wear in favour of speedily going out in her home dress, only to return freezing to the bone and covering her shivering shoulders with her bony hands.

Every time, she cursed herself for this small stupidity. Every winter, she continued doing it.

“Or maybe,” Petunia nastily began, sneering at the thing, “this is all _you_ know?”

In that moment, she felt it: the _power_.

And she gasped. And she couldn’t breathe. And she needed to get rid of them soon, very soon, and to start re-writing that letter _yet again_ so it could happen.

“You are still alive – your husband and your spawn, too – only because of Potter, you know,” the thing started almost conversationally, but its spine was still stiff and ramrod-thin. “He would hate me if something unfortunate were to happen to your sorry existences. You must thank him for that.”

“We’ve been giving him our food and clothing and roof-“

“Scraps from the table, the whale’s castoffs, a cramped space to inhabit, and a miserable existence,” the thing spat with utmost loathing. Its eyes were of a most alluring shape of claret, Petunia noticed with a shudder, where before she had tried to avoid looking at the abomination at all. “Don’t sugar-coat it to quell your conscience!”

“How do you know this? And why do you care?” Petunia demanded to know. “You don’t strike me as empathic, boy, and from what I’ve seen you don’t even like the other one much. And still, you protect him and talk in his favour-“

The thing’s lips bitterly hitched upwards.

“Because, my dear ‘Aunt’, I felt everything he felt.” The laugh that burst out of the freak’s chest flabbergasted Petunia. And frightened her. No human, no freak could let out such grating, ugly sounds. The madness stilled, and a calm tone overtook the atmosphere. “I was him, a neglected part of him. And now he is mine. I don’t know much, but this is my conviction.”

Petunia’s eyes went wide and she drew back from such preposterous claims.

“I- Impossible!” she blurted out in frenzied worry, unwilling to believe in what the freak was spouting. “Mad, that’s what you are, boy! This freak has always been alone; we would have noticed you, we’ve always been here and monitored him and-“

“If that was the case, and if indeed all this were my imagination running wild...” The freak’s voice trailed off as this Riddle produced a vicious grin. “How come I know things that can utterly ruin your reputation and all you’ve been working so hard to achieve?”

Petunia paled. No, she didn’t think they had done anything wrong – freaks were freaks, after all, and never turned out well, and should be stomped on like the pests they were – but their neighbours...

Yes, if some things got out, the neighbours might not agree with her and Vernon’s decisions – close-minded and naive, those people were. They wouldn’t understand that some things needed to be done, that sometimes covert disdain or outright violence were the way to go. They wouldn’t understand what it was like living with a disgrace.

Yes, they would disagree.

The freak smirked and leaned over the table.

“Do you think they will admire your brave decision to take in a boy only to abuse him?  Or clap in delight at the tales of your treatment of him, of the way you have allowed your son and husband to treat him, while you yourself stand by and watch, not uttering a word and silently agreeing-“

“I’ve never agreed with their ways!” Petunia shouted, losing her composure.

She wanted to refute the claim, to laugh it off and deny, deny, deny-

She couldn’t. She had done all that, and more.

And she would do it again, if need be. Her hatred ran too deep, had held her hostage for so long that by now Petunia had developed Stockholm’s Syndrome towards it, in love with this abhorrence of all things magic and freakish, to the point where she could not stop, could not ever hope to stop, and revelled in the feeling.

With every beating her sister’s spawn took, her soul grew heavier, but her self-esteem grew bigger.

“-Or do you think they will condone the way you used him? A myriad of household chores, Petunia, really?” The thing’s eyes narrowed and he was no longer saying but spitting the words. “You would have never completed those yourself, and all in a single day, no less! You made him forget himself in the endless housework, abused him like you would a slave, and never had the decency to pay him with even a kind word, not that those are much good. You have been treating him like faecal matter all these years. What is worse, you have convinced yourself that your attitude is justified.”

“And what do you propose I had to do?” Petunia snapped and wrinkled the table cloth, her mouth a wry line splitting her face in two. “He was dumped on us! We never wanted him. I hated my freakish sister, and then, just because she got herself blown up out of the blue, we had to take him in and take care of him, and – good Heavens! – love him! Besides, I’ve never personally landed a single blow on him. So all your complaints are null and void and are simply the whingings of a child-”

“You are a wretched woman.” The thing was calm – disgusted, certainly, but calm. Petunia frowned, then sneered. She didn’t appreciate the insult. “I will leave aside the incidents of spatulas and heads – because, surely, the former had a mind of its own and hit Potter on its own accord – but I shall enlighten you as to the rest of your wrongdoings.”

“Of which there’s none.”

“Let’s start with all those moments when accidental magic came into play. For one, do you know that when a child is hungry and summons a piece of bread after a day of gardening, it is not a cause for shrieking and hitting him with a frying pan? Nor does it give you the justification to lock this hypothetical child in a cupboard for days. Reflect on that, if you will. Now, another moment-“

“Stop this!”

Petunia was pale and shaking. The hatred in her was strong, nursed by years of experiencing it towards her sister, but the conscience was not dormant either – and those two emotions were tearing her heart apart, both vicious and violent, both striving to win and disregarding her personal opinions.

But the freak continued, on and on, blabbering out all the secrets of her family, even reviving the guilt she had stomped on with the more cutting phrases and memories she had buried deep into her mind and had mourned.

All the times they Vernon had hit the freak, and she had allowed it to happen.

All the times Duddidums had bullied and threatened the freak, and she had allowed it to happen.

All the times she herself had blown up and vented her rage on the freak, and she had allowed it to happen.

All the times they had used the freak for preparing food and cleaning the house, and she had allowed it to happen.

All those instances flashed by in her head, in her heart, evoking the forgotten empathy, which rushed to help the battling conscience and outweigh the hatred, and the balance tipped in favour of the gentler side of her.

“I understand,” she finally said.

A questioning silence dwelt in the kitchen for a moment, the frostbite ceased to matter.

“Come again?” The thing’s voice was soft and dangerous. It caressed her like a black cat’s soft paws which were pleasant right now, but could grow claws at any moment.

“I understand,” she repeated, sounding stronger now. Oh no, the hatred had not ceased, never would – too late for that. Yet, she understood the reasoning behind the freak’s feelings.

The creature’s claret eyes narrowed as it sneered.

“You understand, but you refuse to change. This is why out of all your disgusting family you are the one I despise most. You see everything, realise what all your actions mean, but it never deters you. You are revolting.”

“Yes, I am,” the woman admitted past her pursed lips. “Still, I will try my best to ask that man to place you with someone else, someone more accepting of all this nonsense. Initially, I admit, I was prepared to throw you out of the house for good if the old freak wished you here still, but now I might reconsider.”

“Good. This might save your life.”

A brisk nod, and nothing more was said. Petunia returned to her letter.

 

* * *

He didn’t know who he really was, nor did he know the reasons for his existence.

He was just... Tom. Tom Riddle.

A repellent, common name, the one he shared with plenty of Potter’s classmates, and the milk-boy, and a couple of neighbours, and an acquaintance of Vernon’s.

There was something else nagging at the back of his mind, something Tom thought he had to remember, but he couldn’t, and so he angrily ignored the feeling and continued reading.

Attempted to continue reading.

The lines blurred before his eyes and merged together into incomprehensible clusters of words. For a second, Tom thought he was getting blind just like Potter, but then dismissed the thought: he was greater than that, he knew, and no blindness could overtake him.

Somehow, Tom was sure of his greatness.

And it relieved him, because he was sure of very few things.

He had been with Potter for the entirety of the other boy’s life – all eight years of it. Or so he thought. He didn’t remember Potter’s early childhood, so maybe they had been together a bit less.

Tom had experienced everything Potter had experienced, had felt all that Potter had felt- And yet, his opinions were his own. Reflecting back on Potter’s actions, he thought them foolish and childish and undignified: truly, what did such fickle emotion as love matter?

But Potter craved it, going as far as becoming a slavish skeleton with bruises at his relatives’ beck and call, always listening to them, always compliant, always ready to please and to obey and to carry out orders, which Tom, in his present body and mindset, could not understand at all.

How could one person be so strong inside, surrounded with that delightful aura of magic that compelled Tom to lick his lips in deliriousness and move  closer to Potter, so cunning – you had to see the originality that bubbled in the boy when he had to sneak out for food! – and so bright – countless of hours of hiding in the library aside, the boy had an analytical streak to him that ran deep and wide, and yet act so meek and pathetically eager to please.

Tom sneered. He was sure he had never been like this-

Yet again, who _was_ he?

Sometimes, Tom thought he could see flashes.

_A cave and children, two or three of them, wailing their eyes out in the darkness. They couldn’t get out, so they shouted and raved, but it was moot – he had taken care of it-_

_A bunny. A cute little bunny, white-coated and loved. Hung by the wooden rafters. And there was a scrunched-up face of a boy, and Tom relished in it, because he had deserved it, for calling him a freak, for bullying him, for disparaging him-_

_A box now. Its contents were strewn across the bed on which he sat, caressing each item, because each had been a source of triumph to him. It didn’t matter that the objects didn’t have much worth – they were priceless to those who had slighted him, and he had enjoyed watching them tear up and cry-_

There were many instances more.

Tom didn’t catch the names and the details of locations, because those usually were blurry or not present at all, with fog in place of furniture and walls. His eyesight usually concentrated on certain objects, and even more frequently on emotions they inspired only. The deeds themselves didn’t matter in the end. The triumph, the victory...

_That_ did.

The name ‘Albus Dumbledore’ had also rung a bell, which was the reason Tom pushed the blasted woman to write that letter, aside from the nagging fact that the old man was the one to have dropped Potter and, consequently, him, in this hole of a place.

Anyway, Dumbledore was connected to another flash, this one even less comprehensive than the other ones.

_A wardrobe on fire. Fear, fear, fear. All his possessions were there! How could he-_

_Like a mirage in an oasis, it was gone, and he blinked before realisation gave way to joy. It was real! Magic was real! And he was a wizard now, and no one would call him a freak anymore, and he would be with his kind and-_

The flashes always cut off abruptly. Sometimes, they weren’t even memories or scenes but notions, like that ‘muggle’ word or the major part of his vernacular, really. Sometimes, they were opinions. Sometimes, they were words of someone else echoing in his mind.

A chant of voices – My Lord! My Lord! My Lord! – crying out their exaltation endlessly was his favourite.

Tom heard a screeching sound. Peeking out of the whale’s bedroom – he wouldn’t spend a second in that tiny cupboard – he was met with the sight of Petunia, sneering and complaining, undoing the binding on a tawny owl’s legs and taking a letter.

Silently, he waited until she finished reading, all pale with her hands trembling.

She chanced a glance up at him and nodded. Tom raised an eyebrow.

“He’s coming. At six, when everyone is home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish to say that Tom’s sudden appearance in Harry’s life and their separation will not be disclosed for quite some time. It’s connected to horcruxes, which is pretty obvious, but considering that neither of them will know what it is for some years, they will have only speculations. Also, I would like to point out that Tom’s flashes of memories will not give him that big of an advantage in magical field; he's already a prodigy and it doesn't need enhancing.


	3. A Strange Man in Strange Clothes

As Harry ambled down the street, he was lost in thought. So many things popped up in his mind, reminding him of events and places and people and objects, only to disappear in an ocean of other thoughts. They came and went like a tide, quick and incomprehensible. When Harry tried to grasp one, his attention slipped in favour of another, and the previous thought flitted out of his grip.

Harry didn’t fault his mind. Really, these days he had so much to ponder, so many mind-boggling events to analyse, that his disorientation was forgivable.

Yet, all those thoughts were tied to one: a person.

That boy, Tom Riddle; the one Harry had woken up next to, had seen first thing in the morning, had bantered with...

Tom, who had almost killed that morning.

Harry shivered, although no wind bit him or swept by. In fact, the weather was sunny and irritatingly pleasant, and there weren’t even any bullies or Dudley’s henchmen around to spoil it – not that Harry needed their help.

He felt oddly... empty.

As if some essential hunk of him had been carved out of his body and placed elsewhere. A portion of him he hadn’t paid that much attention to, hadn’t even been aware of its existence, but still there for a long time.

Until today’s morning. Until that boy had come.

Harry felt a pull, a weird kinship to that Tom Riddle, which showed vividly even in the way Harry had blown up and demanded answers, painfully gripping and shoving the other, unafraid to hurt him. (Which reminded: he had to apologise to Riddle later. While Harry didn’t look like it, he could throw one fine punch.)

Still, Harry _never_ back-chatted or generally showed more attitude than a doormat.

He satisfied his vindictive feelings in other, smaller ways: who cared if salt found its way into a fruitcake instead of sugar? Or sometimes accidents happened and Petunia’s favourite dresses found themselves in a dumpster instead of the laundry basket (and of course, Harry timed things so that his Aunt never found out it was him to help). On bad days his Aunt’s beloved petunias kept dying – pesticides, of course – and cockroaches sneaked into Vernon and her bed. 

And that’s not taking into account all those really strange things that kept happening around him.

So, when real confrontation came, Harry restrained himself with chipper thoughts of revenge and stood under the cascade of badmouthing and an occasional hit or two courtesy of Uncle Vernon. He made his eyes grow large and repentant, tucked his hands behind his back, and created a picture full of remorse.

With the Dursleys, the sneaky, tricky way worked much better than brute force, especially if you took a moment to consider Uncle Vernon’s bulk and brawn. _If I punch him, they probably won’t be able to scrape me off the walls,_ Harry thought solemnly.

Then again, thanks to Tom... Could he hope for the things to improve?

_Well, no way to find that out ‘til I arrive, right?_

As Harry neared the familiar hated house, he curiously noted that the curtains were drawn and didn’t allow even a meagre ray of waning sunshine in. Harry cocked his head at that, because it was six and Aunt Petunia loved entertaining guests at the time, shoving Dudley to the Pierses for a tea with crumpets, and usually every time he came home after both school and a long walk through the park, he caught the windows full of bright artificial light, displaying cheerful conversation, amiable gossiping neighbours, and some tea-drinking.

Sometimes, Harry thought she did it on purpose: to force him see a life he could not have.

This time, though...

_It’s as if she is afraid of someone glimpsing what’s going on inside._

The curious soul that Harry was, it didn’t take him long to quicken his pace and stride up the staircase and turn the doorknob.

* * *

The atmosphere in the house reminded him of mourning.

Except for the titbit that no one in the Dursley household looked dead or dying, only somewhat constipated – but that was Aunt Petunia’s default expression.

 _Well, at least it’s not Uncle Vernon with a belt as part of the welcoming committee,_ Harry thought dryly.

“Didn’t take you long,” Harry’s aunt bit out. He ignored it. She was always snippy, so he usually resorted to looking at her body language to decipher the level of her annoyance. Right now her hands were in a nervous clasp on her knees as she stiffly sat in a plush armchair. Oh, not too angry then, mostly anxious.

Harry’s eyes drifted past her and widened. Blimey!

Amazingly, Tom Riddle occupied the sofa.

“Sorry,” Harry mumbled absently to satisfy his Aunt, and flicked a curious glance at Tom, who scowled at his appearance. “You’re in the same room... And you haven’t killed each other yet- Oh, I mean, what are you both doing here?”

It was Tom, who answered, in the same drawl Harry remembered from the morning.

“In a few minutes our living issues are going to be resolved.”

Harry inclined his head, uncomprehending. “Er... In what sense?”

Suddenly, he felt a cold shiver run down his spine, a premonition of sorts, as if his control on his life was slipping, along with the normalcy and the routine. Apart of Harry wanted to rejoice, while the other one wanted to recoil in fear. Tom’s nasty smirk did nothing to alleviate his inner confusion.

“We are about to get out of this hole, Potter. I made it obvious this morning that we are not going to stay in this wretched place a second longer than needed, didn’t I?”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t insult my home,” Aunt Petunia snapped. Harry saw her fingers twitch, once again giving him an impression that she was about to strike either Tom or him, but found restraint at the last moment. “After all, nothing is set in stone yet. He may just as well decide you’re better off here than with the rest of your crowd.” She grimaced. “Unfortunately.”

“If that man has half the common sense normal people do, he will not let us remain here.”

“That’s the point, boy. Your crowd has _no_ common sense. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have found yourself at my home at all.”

 _Touché,_ Harry acknowledged reluctantly, although he was still in a bit of confusion over most of Riddle and Aunt Petunia’s quarrel. Who were they talking about? And what was going to happen?

Harry hated being in the dark. Illogically, since that morning and Tom Riddle’s appearance in his life, things hadn’t become any clearer.

Riddle scoffed and threw his head backwards to rest on the gigantic cushion. Warily, Harry sneaked to the sofa and stiffly dropped on the edge of it. His legs were tense, he himself was ready to jump to his feet at a moment’s notice if Aunt Petunia so much as hinted at snatching the nearest vase and smashing it into the ‘freaks’, as she was prune to when Harry misbehaved in a spectacularly weird way.

_Then again, a vase is too expensive. What if Riddle’s head turns out to be too firm? She’d fetch the frying pan, I think._

Thankfully, no Uncle Vernon around. Harryloathed the man. He had worked his way into Harry’s childhood list of The People I Hate but Don’t Have the Guts to Gut (Yet) – a completely fictional document with the Dursleys’ names at the very top, followed by Piers Polkiss and that nasty headmaster who reported him for every little thing. Often, when a purple-faced rage overtook Harry’s uncle, the man would raise his fist, and in those moments Harry wished to retaliate or shout or storm out of the house or even reply with his own fists and bites-

But as much as Harry hated Uncle Vernon, he feared him even more. Brutality never solved anything, even less so familial quandaries.

For the man to break the sanctity of household relationships with force...

Harry tiptoed around his Uncle in the best of times.

“You look like you are overworking your fragile brain matter.”

Harry threw an unimpressed half-glare at the boy, his mouth opening to snap a sharp retort- Recollections sped past him in his brain:The morning. Tom Riddle’s jiggery-pokery. Uncle Vernon and dark veins.

Harry’s teeth clanked.

You didn’t just insult loony boys who dropped from the sky and into cupboards and had the ability to freeze grown-up, obese men like how a python would a frightened bunny. Being extra cautious every once in a while didn’t hurt.

At his side, but some space on the sofa away and in a more comfortable position, Tom regarded him coolly for a second before a smug smirk bloomed on his mouth.

“Scared to reply, are you now,” the infuriating boy commented with no questioning intonation to his remark. Harry gritted his teeth but flickered a glance to his Aunt. With her sour face in his line of vision, Harry felt more submissive, eager to please and compliant than he was. “Where’s that fiery temper from the morning, the shaking of my shoulders and all that drama?”

Uncle Vernon was weaker than Tom. Harry was weaker than Uncle Vernon. Clenching his fists, the smaller boy had to remind himself of that.

Still...

Bullies and mocking people occupied the middle part of Harry’s childhood hate list. Tom was acting like one at that moment. The realisation clinched the deal, and Harry freed some particle of his inner temper that he usually guarded.

“No theatrical performances for free,” he snapped irritably. He inched even closer to the edge of the sofa, uncoordinated and awkward, almost falling off. He felt suddenly scared by the morning occurrence – the guy near him had almost murdered, for God’s sake! – but when Harry had a spur of courage, he carried on undaunted all he wished. “I hope you go soon and leave me be!”

Tom narrowed his eyes.

“Watch your attitude. I am not someone you wish to cross, just as I am not a person to tolerate stupidity and brash words. You should be grateful, you little runt, because, hopefully, in a few hours we will be out of this hole and in a loving family.”

“As if anyone would love _you_ ,” Aunt Petunia sneered. Her hands fisted the bottom of her flowery dress, strangely fancy for a quiet evening at home.

Tom shot her a dark warning look while Harry flinched in hurt, his eyes glossing with a faraway haze, and fumbled with his hands. True. The words felt like razors.

“Well, if you managed to come across a husband, muggle, I don’t see why worthy, magical people wouldn’t–” Tom abruptly cut himself off and sneered. Throwing a glance at Harry, he hurried to address the other boy in a snappish tone, “Not that you are the next best thing, mind.”

Harry quirked his lips uncertainly. His mouth snapped open to retort, when the doorbell rang. Aunt Petunia paled. Her hold on the hem of her dress tightened to the point where Harry had to pity the poor fabric: the woman looked near destroying the material.

“That person you were talking about?” Harry guessed out loud.

“Probably. Get the door, woman!”

Aunt Petunia shot Tom a smouldering glare, but complied, rising to her feet, smoothing out the wrinkles on her clothing, and sniffing haughtily. With a hiss of “Don’t you dare talk to me that way, boy!” she strode to invite the guest. Harry breathed slower.

“Nasty muggle, the worst sort,” Tom muttered by his side with a sneer painted on his face.

“She’s just nervous. You gave her quite a scare this morning, and I can’t imagine what you’ve been scheming the entire day while I was away.”

“Doesn’t excuse her.”

“True.”

Harry heard the steps first. They weren’t particularly loud – on the contrary, muffled by Persian carpets, they seemed almost sneaky, inconspicuous. Especially for the person who appeared after them.

His eyes wondered. He could only stare, mesmerised and appalled, both contradictions true.

The doorway revealed an old man, who possessed the most crooked nose and the most twinkling eyes Harry had ever seen, as well as a long white beard and garish, awful – _dress?_ – with dancing blue cucumbers and laughing purple clouds that made his eyes burn just by watching them. Aunt Petunia’s sneer showed how unimpressed she was. Harry knew that he, too, shouldn’t find anything pleasant in that gaudy appearance, and probably stay as far away from the lunatic as possible-

But the man looked so un-Dursley-ish, so kind and grandfatherly, that Harry felt a tug on his heart and a wave of sadness that washed over him, overwhelming him for a second.

“Ah, young Harry.” The old man twinkled at the boy full blast, his lips stretching into a nice smile. “What do we have here–”

As his eyes drifted to Tom, the light in them dimmed and died completely. Suddenly, the kindly grandfather bared the side of a world-weary warrior. 

“Tom Riddle,” he said without intonation.

Tom inclined his head. His claret eyes pierced their target, a python’s stare bestowed upon the old man as the connection between them never wavered, even as Harry shifted and looked from one to the other. An uncomfortable silence hung in the room, unbroken even by the sour Aunt Petunia, until Tom asked slowly, “You know me?”

The old man wizened even more.

“Better than you know yourself.”

Tom’s expression sharpened.

“How?” he demanded slowly. The underlying order transmitted through the room and invoked spine-tingling shudders in Harry with the hidden force it carried, dangerous and breathlessly powerful.

“Aren’t _you_ supposed to tell me that, Tom?” The old man advanced a step forward. “You have always loved to gloat, and I suppose you have more reason than ever right now, when you are holding your most accursed enemy hostage? Little Harry here, is he another victim of yours?”

The old man continued walking, just as the temperature in the room dropped until those icy blue eyes held Harry’s entire world, even if the full power of them was directed not on him, but on Tom. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he liked the man as much as before.

What right did he have to spit nonsense to Tom, when the kid had done nothing that the old man knew of?

“Do you believe you will succeed where you failed before-“

Harry had had enough.

“Excuse me, sir,” he started politely. The tension in the room snapped. All eyes flew to him. “I think you are scaring Ri- Tom.” The claret-eyed boy indeed had gone pale as bone, but glowered at Harry at the words. Harry shrugged it off. “He doesn’t remember anything. He appeared here out of the blue this morning, without memories or things, y’know. And you’re not making things better.” Harry didn’t bother keeping the accusations out of his voice. The way the old man had pounced on Tom had been cruel and unjust.

Now, looking at him, those blue eyes sparked with kindness once again. Harry frowned in confusion.

“Do you believe his claims?”

Harry shot a side-glance at Tom, who was studying his every movement with an unnerving intensity no one had ever deemed Harry worthy of before. It was flattering and challenging and frightening.

The smaller boy averted his gaze before sighing and saying, with determination filling every syllable, “I believe in giving him a chance to prove them.”

The old man scrutinised them both for a second until he came to a decision with a sharp nod and a reappearing smile. “I know how to do it, Harry.” He addressed Tom then, “I require for you to raise your chin and look me in the eye, Tom. If things stand indeed as you say...”

“Of course they are,” Tom bit out. “Do you think I would truly waste my time in this unambitious town and even worse company?”

“Hey!” Harry bristled in offense. “I’ve just saved you!”

Derisive, Tom snorted. A withering hand grasped his chin, with a bit more pressure than needed, and jerked it upwards – just enough for Tom to glower defiantly into the man’s face that wrinkled down in concentration. Harry watched the interaction quietly, intently, and he didn’t know whether it was a flight of imagination after a completely weird day, or reality, but for a moment the mad twinkle in the stranger’s eyes evaporated and gave way to sharpness.

Harry heard Aunt Petunia stomping out of the lounge, but still watched the scene in front of him with fascination.

The boy had half a mind to step in at the sudden frown on Tom’s face, holding out his hand to touch the old man’s sleeve, when the stranger moved away himself. He looked satisfied, and a bit puzzled, if Harry had to say so himself, as if whatever he had witnessed in Tom’s eyes had hit him with surprise.

“Happy now?” Tom ground out. His scowl only deepened and he rubbed his temples in soothing motions.

Worried, Harry tentatively reached out to ascertain that everything was all right. As soon as his fingertips ran into Tom’s shoulder, they felt it.

Completeness.

It was not an obvious feeling, as they had both pretty much missed it earlier, when Harry had shaken Tom for explanations and answers. Instead of burning heat, it resembled steady, friendly warmth, not unlike a bonfire. It didn’t overwhelm, but it sustained.

Harry realised what he had been missing the entire school day.

With a hiss, Tom wrenched his shoulder away. His eyes glimmered like magma as he skewered Harry with another trademark glower. It was getting repetitive. Harry made a mental note to remind Tom to work on the variety of his facial expressions. They were scary, too.

“Don’t touch me,” Tom hissed at him.

Harry bristled in offense. With no Aunt Petunia in sight, he felt bolder, more himself. True, the stranger’s presence also placed inhibitions on his attitude, but those weren’t the bars on his real self that the Dursleys imposed.

“It’s not my fault! Besides, what is this thing? Do you know why-“

“Fascinating!” The old man drew attention back to himself again with a loud clap of his hands. Harry suspected that he knew a fight was brewing, and preferred to avoid it.

The joviality that had vanished at the first sight of Tom shone full-blast now. He dipped into one of the numerous pockets of his dress-thing and fished out a few round sweets, which he held out to Harry and Tom.

“Lemon drops, my boys?”

Harry didn’t like acid things, but he rarely got any sweets, and surely those wouldn’t taste like real lemons, so he reached out to grab one – only to have his hand slapped midway by an irate Tom.

“What’s your problem?” he rounded on the taller boy.

A sneer responded him. “Don’t you know what you should do if a stranger offers you sweets?”

Harry blinked and recounted what the Dursleys told him, Vernon always with a wistful little smile on his face.

“Er... Yes? Grab it, ask for more, and if I get lucky and they ask me to come with them, accept?”

Tom just shot him an unimpressed look.

“Now, now, children,” the old man placated, sauntering to plop down on the armchair in front of Harry and Tom’s sofa. “I’m not a stranger. My name is Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Magic. You do know what magic is, right?”

Tom narrowed his eyes, but stayed stubbornly silent, only sending a warning look at Harry, which the latter interpreted as an order to keep silent about Vernon and those black vein-thingies. Harry shuddered. He didn’t wish to be reminded of that himself.

“Magic...” Harry began uncertainly. He fiddled with his hands. Suddenly, he was nervous again. After Tom’s performance, deep suspicion crept in, and no matter how hard Harry attempted to batter it away, it held resiliently. “It’s the stuff of fairy tales, right? Like, witches, monsters, winged horses, happy ends, and cauldrons? Right?”

Harry had never been told a fairy tale in the traditional way, but when he had been younger, he would sneak about the house late at night and settle down by the door of Dudley’s room, and listen in to Aunt Petunia’s voice, which lulled in a hypnotic way amid the silence of the house, as it spoke stories of valiant knights and beautiful princesses and the victory of the good against the bad. He would close his eyes and imagine himself in the land of magic and wonder, all the while dearly hoping that it would be the world of his dreams that night instead of the terrible nightmares that showed him green light and high-pitched laughter.

The old man – Dumbledore, Harry reminded himself firmly, the Headmaster of something – only popped a lemon drop in his mouth in response.

Harry was getting agitated. He wanted to hope... but couldn’t allow himself to.

Imagining a magical life different from his own made him hurt in yearning.

“Just tell him and be done with it,” Tom ordered imperiously.

Dumbledore glanced at him sternly, unhappy with the demanding tone, but complied, inclining his head. Harry wondered why the man’s face always softened when he looked at him, and hardened at the sight of Tom. Was there a logical reason? Or some preconceived notion?

Besides, hadn’t it seemed that Dumbledore had recognised Tom?

All those questions flew out of the window when Dumbledore started talking.

He told Harry about his parents, how valiantly they had fought against that evil Dark Lord Voldemort, how much sorrow their death had brought on, and Harry’s own miraculous survival of the Killing Curse, an unprecedented feat. About the wizarding world and its wonders, about Hogwarts, about muggles and muggleborns, about Diagon Alley, about brave Light witches and wizards – Harry listened with an opened mouth and soaked every last word in, while Tom intently stared at Dumbledore.

Harry had felt sadness, brief anger, awe, marvel, confusion, disbelief, joy...

He felt like Dumbledore kept silent on some issues, but didn’t let that deter him from the longing he experienced, the desire to thrust into that world and forget about the life he led now.

Finally, when another lemon drop popped into Dumbledore’s mouth symbolised the end of his tale, Harry uncertainly asked, “Umm... You mentioned that you tell the muggle-raised about the magical world only when it’s time for them to enter it, to go to Hogwarts. But you’re telling us this now... What does it mean?”

Dumbledore chuckled. His eyes twinkled in merriment. When Harry caught his gaze, fleetingly, all his memories resurfaced. The sensation sped by, and Harry chose to ignore it.

“You see, my boy, initially I believed this to be the best place for you. To give you a happy, normal, humbling childhood-”

“Oh, it is a humbling childhood all right,” Tom sneered.

“-but now I realise you have shaped to be a well-mannered, kind boy already, and won’t be swept off your feet when you enter the world of magic.” Harry flushed at the praise, and then perked up.

“Does it- Does it mean I’m going to live among wizards now? Oh, and Tom, I suppose-“

“Yes, yes,” Dumbledore interrupted him with an indulgent quirk of lips. “I have just the family who would like to adopt you both. They have a few children of their own already, so you won’t feel bored. They are a nice, caring family, and instil proper values in their children-“

Harry, however, didn’t listen. His mind was stuck on the first phrase.

“Adopted? As in, really-really adopted?” he continued to mutter, mostly to himself, his mouth opening and closing repeatedly, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. Tom’s glare burned through the back of his neck, but Harry paid no mind; he wouldn’t let Tom spoil this!

“Of course, you must not reveal your real name, Harry.” Looking at Harry over the top of his half-moon glasses, Dumbledore went back to serious again. “The Dark Lord’s servants are still lurking around. In fact, had you not had a... ‘brother’ now, you would have still remained here.”

“’Brother’?” Tom spat out the word as if it were an insult. The disgusted expression he wore wounded Harry.

“Yes, Tom, ‘brother’. You will act your part as orphaned muggleborn twins named Hadrian – Harry for short – and Thomas – Tom for short. We’ll think of a surname for you later-“

Loud, stomping sounds drifted nearer. Harry paled and hunched in on himself. He was acquainted with those more than he would have ever wanted to be.

Uncle Vernon arrived.

The door burst open to reveal the man’s angry face.

“What’s going on? No more of this nonsense, I tell you! Pet, how did this-“

Dumbledore smiled jovially and held out a hand with another lemony treat, unfazed by the furious spittle. Uncle Vernon staggered back from the offered lemon drop staring at it as if it were Devil himself. Or poison. Harry supposed for his Uncle it didn’t make that big of a difference.

“Ah, Mr. Dursley. You chose the best time to join us. The boys here and I were just discussing the ways for them to enter the wizarding world sooner than expected...”


	4. The Burrow

Harry whistled brightly as he gathered all his scant belongings into a big plastic bag, taking care not to forget a single item – not that it was an arduous work, seeing how little he actually possessed. Well, at least, he supposed Tom had even less.

Speaking of Tom...

“Are you ever going to finish? The old goat might come any given minute, and I’m not going to stay here because of a misguided notion of _brotherly affection_.” Tom sneered at the word as if it offended him. Harry shot him back a glower.

 “If you actually dragged your arse here to help me instead of standing there and complaining non-stop like a capricious little princess-“

Petunia’s loud steps interrupted what Harry was sure would have been a brilliant retort that could shut Tom up for a long time. For eternity, preferably.

“Out, out, you unruly boy,” she hissed at them. She tossed a few toy figurines and a jacket into the plastic bag and grabbed Harry by the shoulder to urge him out of the cupboard. A cheerful bell rang.

She didn’t even attempt to grab Tom – a fact Harry found completely irritating. He wished he scared people just as much!

Tom raised an eyebrow at him, smirking, as if he knew of the thoughts drifting in and out of Harry’s head.

“Where’s your speech of ‘protecting’ me gone to?” Harry snapped at Tom indignantly, rubbing his shoulder as they neared the doorway.

“It existed?”

Harry wanted to punch him. When Albus Dumbledore entered, that was the scene that greeted him: Harry glowered and spat insults while Tom masterfully quipped in response.

“Oh, oh, behaving like brothers already? Delightful!” Dumbledore exuded the radiance and cheer Harry had come to deem as his default state, clapping his hands together in a gesture that looked too childish for the wizened wizard. “Now, I trust that everything is in order? Petunia? Mr. Dursley?”

“Everything will be as soon as you take him- _them_ away from here. Preferably forever. Just to warn you, we’re moving and changing jobs.”

“Don’t worry about losing Harry forever, Petunia. We wizards have devised plenty of ways to find someone just by their blood or their name – you can expect us any day.” When Dumbledore congenially smiled, and Petunia paled, Harry couldn’t suppress his snicker, immediately stifling it in his fist. When his Aunt threw him a fulminating glare, he put on an innocently sheepish smile which didn’t fool anyone but made his relatives grit their teeth.

“How long is this farewell-tripe going to continue?” Uncle Vernon broke in. His puce-coloured face assumed an almost pleasant expression, in lieu of Harry and Tom’s parting – if you could call a constipated grin pleasant, that was. “Grab the boy and go. I doubt he’d want to visit us either.”

The air around Uncle Vernon condensed menacingly as the man spat, his eye glinting evilly down at Harry with spark of threat in them, “Would you, boy?”

Suddenly meek and void of mirth, Harry cast his eyes down.

“We won’t see each other again,” he promised hollowly.  

“And neither of us will cry because of this,” added Tom as he walked up to them. His hand, cool as a stone in winter, clutched Harry’s forearm for a second in warning. Harry nodded, to convince himself or to appease Tom, he wasn’t sure.

Yet Harry truly didn’t cry.

He felt too little for the parting, after all.

* * *

“So, do you like side-along apparition, my boys?” Dumbledore beamed and beamed and beamed. His golden – or was it actual gold? – robes reflected the shimmering light, so Harry couldn’t even glare at the man. Except he wouldn’t have anyway, considering his current predicament.

“Potter!” Tom hissed and bounced away from him. Funny, Harry hadn’t seen him act so lively before. “If you are going to throw up, don’t you dare do this on my shoes!”

“You need a wardrobe change anyway,” Harry mumbled after heaving on the grass, just at the same time as Dumbledore said, “Well, they were never good shoes, my boy.”

Tom’s sneer encompassed both of them.

His head still lowered, Harry took a moment to observe Dumbledore and his expression. The man’s stiff posture and suspicion had vanished; he joked and laughed and told them anecdotes of his life without a single care in the world.

“We have to walk a bit so that we can rehearse our story,” the old man chimed in, outstretching a hand to help Harry get up, a friendly smile on his face and making the laugh lines stand up. “Petunia and Mr Dursley looked too edgy to create the pleasant atmosphere needed to digest such matter.”

“Perfect,” Tom gritted out. His claret eyes flashed with anger. “Now we have to walk, too, like common muggles.”

Harry frowned at the way Tom articulated the last word: hatred literally dripped from it, hatred mixed with disdain and derision.  Sure, the Dursleys were the worst sort of muggles, but not everyone shared their loathing of all things magical! They didn’t deserve Tom badmouthing them.

“Oh, it’s nothing, just a couple of kilometres.” Dumbledore’s voice brought Harry back to present. Immediately he wanted to sputter, but in the next moment the man’s face morphed into seriousness. Harry shut up. He supposed it was one of the merits of keeping up the outward cheer all the time: when the cheer stopped, people listened.

“Harry, my boy, I hope you remember that you may not, under any circumstances, reveal your identity as Harry Potter? Death Eaters might sneak up on you and snatch you at any given time-“

“Of course I understand!” Harry cried out and snapped his head upwards, his entire image speaking of wounded pride. “I’m not daft, whatever you all seem to think. Sir.”

“I’ve never claimed otherwise-“

“You implied it,” Harry accused before waving the old man off; the Dursleys had called him worse things throughout the years, so ‘daft’ didn’t even graze his self-esteem. Besides, Harry always forgave people easily, be it for small transgressions or for wickedly ghastly and nefarious deeds. Tom never failed to remind him of his ‘weakness’. “It’s nothing, though. Could you repeat what we have to know about the whole orphanage lie, please?”

“Of course,” Dumbledore agreed pleasantly. “You are two orphans – Hadrian and Thomas Black, soon to become Weasley – whom I have discovered in an orphanage in Surrey by chance because Minerva was visiting a muggleborn there and reported the existence of other two muggleborn boys.”

“And what made ‘us’ so different from others?”

Dumbledore shot them a look from over his glasses, his head inclined.

“Your relation to Mr Potter, of course,” he said gently. He reached out to trace Harry’s scar-less forehead, the boy’s green eyes wide. “James Potter’s mother, a pureblood witch named Dorea Black, had a squib brother who had been blasted off the family tree, Marius Black. He married and had a son, who had you two – before he died in a car accident along with his wife. Minerva saw your similarity to the Blacks, and especially Harry’s similarity to James, and, thinking I had dumped  Harry Potter in an orphanage, raided my office for answers.”

He looked gravely at them, continuing, “Of course, I couldn’t allow the possibility of a Death Eater mistaking ‘Hadrian’ for Harry Potter and torturing him – so we have contacted the Weasley family who agreed to adopt you both.”

“People will recognise me anyway if I’m so similar to my father,” Harry muttered dispiritedly, shuffling his feet and feeling as if a cloud of gloom loomed over his head despite the cheery weather all around – azure skies, bright sun, Dumbledore’s brighter robes.

“No, no, I don’t believe they will.” A mischievous wink sped Harry’s way. “See, your father took a lot after your mother, a Black, and with the wizarding world full of remarkable familial traits and similar features… They will never mistake you for Harry Potter if you don’t have the scar – and you don’t!”

The old man dug into one of his numerous pockets to dish out a handful of lemon drops, offering the treat to Harry and to Tom, both of whom refused: Tom with a sneer and Harry with a polite smile.

“Brilliant! If I have to say so myself. One of my best ideas.” Dumbledore continued chewing.

Harry wanted to comment on that outburst of arrogance but something emerging as they neared it took his breath away.

“I hope this… construction,” Tom vomited the word, “is _not_ our accommodations.”

“Why, Tom, it’s the most particular house in the whole wizarding world!” Dumbledore replied merrily. He waved at the… thing in the distance. “One of the very oldest, even older than Malfoy Manor! Although I do believe that it had only one floor and was a shed of some sort- Oh well. Unique, fascinating, and ancient! Why, Tom, you should feel honoured to live in such a landmark! Even some architectural catalogues included it in their charts.”

“Yes, I can easily imagine it in a chart of how things should _not_ be built,” Tom murmured under his breath.

Harry, for his part, was dragging his feet on the grass as he scrutinised the whimsical shape of their new home. It emitted a vibe of amiable insanity, looking like a place where people didn’t judge, and Harry even liked it in some way because it differed so much from the empty Privat Drive houses, but-

“Is it even safe?” Harry asked mistrustfully. When he glanced at Tom, for the first time he saw complete understanding there.

* * *

They stepped into the yard, and Harry’s eyes roamed all over the place, taking in, observing, judging.

A lopsided sign stuck in the ground announced “The Burrow” with lopsided letters, and the same was written on a rusty cauldron just near the porch. A few chickens greeted them with crows, at which Tom immediately cringed in disgust. A few pairs of shoes freely pranced around the yard, the children’s ones playing tag. Harry also noticed a garage, a chicken coop, and a large garden that he couldn’t wait to explore.

He loved the house. He just wondered if he would survive living in it.

“Ah, here we are. Dear Molly must have felt the wards announcing our arrival.”

As soon as the door swung open, before Harry could take in the decor, his nose was pressing the plump and wobbly midsection of a woman who hugged him to her chest.

“You are little Hadrian, aren’t you?”

When she pulled away from him, he made out a concerned pretty face and locks of flaming red, the same fiery colour that adorned her cheeks and nose in freckles. She smelt nice, too: a homey smell which reminded him of the time Petunia set out for cooking for Christmas. Except that this woman actually seemed nicer. More genuine. Harry already loved her.

Harry nodded to her question, an insecure expression fleeting across his face before he frowned a little. “I’m Hadrian but I’m certainly not little!” He huffed. “Eight years old is already half-way adult.”

A delighted smile blossomed on her face and she hugged him once more, this time briefly. Harry didn’t struggle because the embrace warmed him and almost made him cry at the same time, so sweet and honest.

“You’re such a dear!” She positively beamed before her gaze locked on Tom. Just as she advanced forward, Tom backed away a step.

“I don’t do hugging,” Tom warned, bracing himself as a virgin girl would do to protect her virtue. Harry snickered at te mental image that popped up. “My name is Thomas Black, not a dear – this one is just for the record.”

The woman chuckled and greeted Dumbledore before addressing them, “Molly Weasley, your new mother.” Her tone saddened when she said next, “Don’t worry, Albus has told me your story. It is so sad that your parents’ lives ended so early.”

“Of course,” Tom said with an impassive face.

“Too early,” Harry whispered, remembering the tales of their heroics, how brave and intelligent that had been, how their kindness used to light up the days of many other people, how they had fought for their ideals and for the rights of those who couldn’t stand up for themselves.

Even now every time Harry acted his part he immediately thought he was betraying his biological parents. Thought that he besmirched their names with his acts of ‘disloyalty’.

He only hoped they didn’t blame him, wherever they were. They had a right – but that irrational sliver of hope inside of him refused to believe that they would renounce him if they had the chance to.

“Well, Arthur is at work, but I can tell you a bit about us. I have six children,” Molly cut into his bubble of thought. Harry smiled gratefully. “Bill, the eldest, is in Gringotts now working with the goblins. Charlie and Percy are at Hogwarts. I’ve sent Fred and George – they are twins, you see – along with Ron to Aunt Muriel to- to get used to the idea of having two more brothers.”

“I have no doubt they are _thrilled_ ,” Tom drawled disdainfully, carefully showing that he believed in the complete opposite. The calculating git was probably looking at the not-so-rich interior and thinking of how poorly they were going to live.

“They don’t want Hadrian and Thomas here?” Dumbledore asked solemnly, reminding them of his presence.

Molly shook her head remorsefully.

“I’m sure the twins will come around soon, but Ron… Well, you know how Ron gets.” She paused before slipping on her smile again, and said, “But I have let Ginny remain! Ginny, dear, here are Hadrian and Thomas. Say hello to them.”

“Just Harry is all right. You can call this scowling git here Tom, too, and it doesn’t matter if he minds-“

The tiny figure emerged so suddenly that Harry’s mouth snapped shut.

She had been hiding behind the matronly figure of Mrs Weasely, a slip of a girl. The same red hair and freckles, curious blue eyes, trousers torn at the knees and a plaster on her face. She shyly smiled at him, and Harry returned the smile.

“Ginny,” she introduced herself in a small voice.

“Harry,” he replied in kind as he stifled the urge to tuck his hands behind his back.

“How sweet,” Tom commented with a sneer before calling out to Mrs Weasley, “Where are we going to sleep?”

* * *

By the end of the day Tom decided a few things for himself. Colour red annoyed him. Weird buildings annoyed him. Big families annoyed him.

He was re-discovering all his annoyances, and he had Albus Dumbledore to blame for it all.

 _I’ll let you experience a typical pureblood household,_ Tom snidely repeated in his head the words that Dumbledore had dared to utter. He strained all his extensive willpower to drown out the chattering behind him; he much rather preferred his own intelligent company than those fools’ who couldn’t hold their tongues. The meeting of those two doomed him to hours full of noise. And imbeciles making eyes at each other. And more noise.

“You’re very clever, Harry,” she told him, awed, after Harry’s recount of Dudley’s chase when he had managed to triumph over the larger boy.

Didn’t the boy see she was mooning after him like a cow!

“Not in school though,” Harry mumbled humbly. “I wouldn’t say that I’m particularly studious. I like learning the stuff I like, but it’s no fun to sit with the nose stuck buried in a book if I have a mountain of other stuff to do. I’ve only ever read so much because Dudley and his cronies didn’t leave me many other choices about ways to spend my free time.”

“The orphanage was so tough,” the girl agreed sympathetically.

Of course, Harry had modified the story to look it as if Dudley were an orphanage bully, which added a whole other level of drama.

Tom, meanwhile, refused to think of the conversation going on behind him and of what it made him feel, so he preferred to ponder on the more pressing issue.

More correctly, he had to _room_ with someone.

Share his living space. Breathe in the same air. Day after day. Constantly.

If situations were nooses, he would have been in one right now.

He envied the girl, precisely because of her gender: out of the whole red-haired herd she lucked out on the rooming arrangements and received her own space. Meanwhile, Harry and Tom occupied Bill’s former bedroom, since the chap hardly needed it now. Right next to Ginny, and Tom didn’t want to contemplate much on it.

Another boy, Percy, got his own bedroom, too, and Tom seethed at the unfairness of it all. When the older boy returned for holidays, Tom would surely be there to manipulate matters so that the other would gift him the room as a present.

Yes, Tom decided. He liked thinking about plans more than thinking about the conversation going on and about being excluded.

* * *

“Hmm, I wonder what our life here will be like,” Harry whispered dreamily, his eyes half-closed and gaze directed at the ceiling above.

Tom snorted in reply.

“A routine. It all looks so fascinating and new right now because it IS new. When the shock and the wonder wear off, the magical world will be nothing out of ordinary for you.”

“Why not? I think... I think even wizards themselves sometimes find themselves surprised in here, no?”

“Just you wait and see.”

Harry chose to ignore the boy he was already deeming to be the embodiment of doom and gloom. Well, not a ray of optimism, that’s for certain.

He recounted the day in his mind. It had been a blast: exploring the Burrow, chattering with Ginny… She had promised to get him acquainted with the ghoul the next day as well as show him how to sneak brooms out of the shed so that her parents wouldn’t notice. She had even proposed to pin the blame on Tom! Harry had chortled so much when Tom had whipped his head around and bestowed upon her his best scowl which he should really get patented.

He shifted in his bed and was falling asleep looking forward to a joyful day if not for an issue that plagued him particularly.

“He’s not too chuffed about it, is he, judging by their descriptions,” Harry muttered into his fluffy pillow. “I mean our ‘brother’ Ron or something. They all talk about him like he’s a bomb ready to go off any minute.”

“He cannot beep a word about it to anyone because whatever enmity he will feel towards us will make that sympathising nitwit snuff it and punish him. If he acts out, he will be digging his own grave.” Tom’s voice acquired a spark of reluctant pride as he added, “You did well, to charm her. Only I could have done better.”

Harry looked daggers at him. “I certainly didn’t do it for you, prat. Or even for myself. She is a very nice person and I like her a lot.” A faint blush graced his cheeks. “She is… like a mother,” he finished softly, his eyes cracking open to stare at the blue cotton of his pillow.

“Fool,” Tom scoffed. “Don’t get attached. If she displays a morsel of affection now, it does not mean that in the future her opinion will not change. Say her _real_ sons come and hate you. Will she ‘love’ you just as much, eh?”

“Don’t say that!”Harry spat, abruptly getting up as his hands clenched into tight fists, trembling to crash into Tom’s face for the insinuation and the taunt. “She’s not like that. I’m a good judge of character.”

Tom chortled, almost bending in two in his vicious mirth.

“You can’t lie to me because I know all your secrets and all your moments of life until the last few days.” He smirked. “You’re an open book I have already read, Harry. I have tapped into all your memories and we both know of the trust you put into people.”

“Done with your brown-nosing?” Harry asked, forcing himself not to lose his cool. Harry worried greatly over dealing with someone who carried the knowledge of all his deepest secrets, delusions, and unfulfilled expectations. Yet, he wanted to downright butcher the arsehole who had the cheek to bring it up in a conversation.

Tom brought a finger up to his lips, humming, before he shook his head lightly. The smirk stuck to his face as if forever frozen there.

“Not quite. I rather like reviving your memories and seeing your reactions,” Tom revealed. He spoke matter-of-factly, making Harry feel like a stubborn child who refused to listen to the most commonsensical ideas and notions. With that tone Tom could probably convince Harry of the good of sadism and the benefits of murders.

“What a sick hobby.”

“I never said it is a hobby. That would imply that I actively seek you to do it, but right now I am simply finding good sides to a desperate situation,” Tom haughtily drawled and scrunched up his face. “Still, you are the most entertaining thing in this… quaint little place. Yes, yes, I mean this attempt at making angry faces. Practise some more, and maybe someday you will intimidate a squirrel.”

Nastily chortling, Tom went back to lying on the bed. Harry did the same – not that he followed Tom’s example, of course. Sitting up was tiring. Yes, that was it.

“One day, I’ll have secrets from you, too,” Harry promised with a scowl on his face. “I’ll be so secretive that you’ll never know anything and won’t guess what it is until it bites you in the arse!”

Proclaiming that, he mutinously stuck out his tongue and dived under the covers, enfolding himself in a cocoon of unfamiliarly warm and cosy blanket. Tom snorted, loudly.

Only much later he would realise the truth that rang in the vow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, there is NO Harry/Ginny. Or Tom/Ginny, for that matter. She will likely have a pairing, but with someone outside of these two. Nevertheless, she will hold a very deep and warm friendship with Harry, and be one of his favourite playmates in his childhood years.
> 
> Second, if you show your interest for the story with a review, I’m much more likely to pay it attention and thus update :)


	5. Settlers Settle

 

Harry slept in for the first time in his life. He stretched, he yawned, he smiled – everything after remembering that no Aunt Petunia would pound on the door and no Dudley would dump a bucket of cold water on him.

As he wiped his bleary eyes, Harry glanced around the room, something he hadn’t done yesterday in all the excitement. It didn’t stretch wider or longer than the Dursleys’ smallest bedroom, but still it fascinated him much more than that graveyard of treasures had ever done.

This room breathed life. Thrills of excitement pierced through him every time Harry inhaled because wherever he looked, he noticed the particles of soul left by the other people who had lived there: although the bedroom was done in an almost violent mixture of blacks and vermilions, in some places the wallpaper peeled to reveal patches of grass-green and yellow dots. A few small carpets decorated the wooden floor, each of them in a different style, while the bookcase and the wardrobe both endured the presence of a multitude of posters, stickers, photos, newspaper clippings…

Harry traced the history of an entire family with his eyes alone, a fact he found both breathtaking and humbling.

After stretching once more, allowing himself an indulgence he rarely experienced, Harry found his daily clothes to put on and discarded his nightshirt given to him by Arthur the other day.

Tom, of course, had already left. His bed was already made, and Harry remembered with a snort the pinched expression on his solemn face when he had rejected the blanket with a bright sunflower-pattern. As much as Tom frightened and angered Harry with his ‘evil-ness’, sometimes his malignance and disdain looked so funny considering their poverty that Harry burst out laughing.

He was almost fond of the boy. Almost. With several hundred big ‘but’s.

The stairs creaked when Harry stepped on them, and he fell in love with the house even more, because the Dursleys would have never allowed anything to fall out of perfection in their normal little house.

Harry skipped down the steps and turned up in the kitchen with a grin splitting his face.

Tom, sitting at the table with his back perfectly straight and a charming smile on his face, interrogated Molly Weasley, who cheerfully replied while waving her wand around as she organised stuff and did the washing-up and knitted mittens all with her words and hand motions alone.

“-Oh dear! No, Tom, I can’t let you borrow my wand or buy _your_ wand for you. I’d love to, of course, but-“

“The wand chooses the wizard,” finished Tom with a blank expression. A moment later he blinked almost imperceptibly, as if shocked at his own words.

“Why, yes!” Molly exclaimed. “Has Professor Dumbledore already told you about this?”

Tom smiled grimly. “Sometimes I just know things.”

A shudder ran through Harry at these words but he didn’t pinpoint why – didn’t have the time to, since Molly noticed him standing awkwardly to the side, and immediately rushed to push him down onto a chair and levitated food around to drop on the plate she set in front of him.

Harry shifted uneasily in his seat.

“Um... Thank you, but really, you don’t have to-“

“Shush, dear, you must be starving,” she silenced him. Tom scrutinised Harry intently but didn’t move or greet him. Simply watched. Harry scowled back at him. “Your brother’s told me about all sorts of atrocities you had to endure in the orphanage. Poor, poor boys! Want another sausage?”

“No, no, really. I’m fine,” Harry mumbled over a threatening pile of food that could last him for weeks. When, after a few more offers, Molly relented and turned away, Harry leaned over the table and ordered Tom, “Take half of it! I’d burst if I ate it all.”

Tom the Git only smirked at him before calling out, “Mr Weasley! I believe my little brother would like some more eggs but is too shy to-“

Harry didn’t let Tom finish: with a furious hiss he lunged and slapped his hand on Tom’s mouth, to which the other boy replied with a furious glower that screamed promises of broken limbs and endless torture. As if Harry was the one in the wrong here!

“You don’t wanna finish that sentence,” Harry warned seriously. Tom bit on his palm in response, and hard. “Ouch! It hurt!”

Harry quickly pulled his hands out of Tom’s mouth and rubbed the bite which glared brightly from the pale skin, while Harry glowered even brighter, righteous anger devouring his very being.

“Of course it did,” Tom spat his indignant response. He ran his hands over his jaw and chin, as if wiping the invisible taint Harry’s hands had nefariously inflicted on him with a mere touch. “I will maim you if you dare stick your grubby hands into my mouth agai-“

The beginning of Tom’s furious rant – they were his hobby, Harry noticed – was interrupted by the arrival of Arthur Weasley who merrily entered the kitchen with a bright disposition and a newspaper in hand. His nightcap dangled precariously off the one side of his head, obviously holding on because of a spell to glue it to the receding hair until the caster wanted it off.

At least they didn’t force Harry and Tom to wear the ridiculous headgear. Well, Harry supposed he could put it on for fun, but Tom would kick and scream and throw such a feat that no one would get a wink of sleep. Harry didn’t know his ‘brother’ all that well yet, but he certainly viewed Tom as a demanding, snippy, and erratic person who didn’t appreciate either fun or good humour. A boring, boring bore, as Mrs Figg sometimes called half the Little Whinging neighbourhood.

“Such a bright, happy morning!” Arthur exclaimed, dropping into one of the six vacant seats, choosing the one at Tom’s right and opposite Harry – because Tom obviously occupied the head of the table position. To boost his ego or to show his superiority, Harry didn’t know, but he bet that the big-headed git already fancied himself the main person in the house already.

“Why does anyone insist on interrupting me in this household?” Tom murmured angrily to himself. Harry ignored him. And he was getting better at it, too!

To reward himself for not responding to Tom’s heated stare, Harry stabbed a piece of sausage with a fork and popped it into his mouth, closing his eyes as the heavenly taste carried him off to umami rapture.

“Sleep well, boys?” Arthur asked over the newspaper. Harry caught sight of the headline, “Dark Arts Banned in Knockturn!” and a moving picture of a signified man with a lion’s mane of hair: rich chestnut and voluminous, framing his noble face in an attractive way.

“Yeah. The bed’s really comfy,” Harry replied enthusiastically, adding extra cheer when Tom only shot the man a sneer.

Harry didn’t know why Tom complained: the claret-eyes boy had immediately snatched the less motley bedspread, dark blue with a depicted dragon, leaving Harry with some plant-patterned one, bright orange and acid green.

“Nice to hear, nice to hear!”

“What about our education?” Tom asked the man, while Harry rolled his eyes. He did well at school, but he never liked the endless studying they wanted children to do. Harry would rather embark on an adventure of sorts than stick around in a library with heaps of tomes around him.

Speaking of adventures…

He couldn’t wait until Ginny woke up. She had promised to introduce Harry to the ghoul whose wails he heard the entire night, and then she would show him the wonders of the garden and the pond, show him how to dispose of the gnomes and how to find fairies curled up in the blossoms of large flowers, and then they would sneak into the broom shed and filch brooms for a couple of hours, and play Quidditch just beneath muggles’ noses…

Harry didn’t have _time_ for education. Not really.

“You can read, write, and count, I suppose?” Molly cut in, placing food onto her husband’s plate before fetching a tea for herself and sitting down with it.

“Of course.”

“Well, there are two ways to educate children who grow up in a magical community,” Arthur started between taking bites to eat. “The richer purebloods hire tutors for their children who teach them, aside from the basic skills, etiquette, politics, family arts, and the like. Seeing that we don’t have- Ehem, we use another method: some times a week we gather pre-Hogwarts children into group in whatever family has the time and the spice for the day, and older witches and wizards teach them.”

“And if we already know how to read, write, and count?” Harry asked, twiddling his thumbs. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face a whole community of wizarding children yet. “There’s no need for me and for Tom to attend, right?”

Arthur and Molly both laughed and traded a look.

“Well, dear,” Molly began with a kind smile, laying a hand on Harry’s shoulder. It warmed him. “The children are of many age groups, and while the littlest ones indeed learn such simple things, there’s plenty of other activities for you.”

“What are they?” Tom interrupted with a frown. “You told me you cannot buy me a wand, which means we will not be able to cast magic- unless you lied.”

“Well, wand magic isn’t the only magic worth learning. Isn’t the only magic that exists, I mean.”

 Hunger swam in Tom’s eyes as the boy leaned forward. His eyes darkened to a burgundy shade, and Harry wanted to make them lighter again, because Tom’s face in that moment frightened him, almost twisted into a countenance of dangerous craving.

“You mean the Dark Arts?” Tom asked. His voice swiped over Harry’s skin like a velvety caress. “We will learn them?”

“No!” Molly gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. She frantically glanced around, as if afraid that a mere mention of the arts would force them to appear in the kitchen and sweep them away under a carpet of darkness. “ No, no, no- how can you say such silly things? Dark Arts live in Azkaban and in old households of hereditary blood-thirsty maniacs, not with- normal people.”

Harry frowned at the mention of ‘normal people’ since it reminded him of the Dursleys and their own insistence on belonging to the normal sort.

Dark Arts sounded ominous, but after all the hype Harry really longed to see for himself if they were worth the fear they inspired.

“We meant the Old Ways, of course,” Arthur said, the calmer one.

Tom scowled. “Dumbledore didn’t mention it.”

“Well, no one _requires_ you to learn this sort of magic, of course,” Molly explained patiently, worrying her bottom lip with her fingers. “You see, it’s quite different from the wand magic you learn at Hogwarts – it’s not wandless or wordless magic either, even though it rarely requires a spell. Mostly the Old Ways are built on rituals and ceremonies invoked on certain holidays, and they rely heavily on details and frequent sacrifices to magic-“

“It’s like- It’s like religion!” Arthur exclaimed, brightening as he remembered a word from the muggle culture. “Only with magic instead of a God. You live and breathe with magic in your soul-“

“Which is why no one treats it seriously,” Molly finished with a smile. “Us wizards don’t like admitting that we have to worship or deeply appreciate something. At the same time, although the Old Ways depend on rituals and lengthy incantations when you dabble into the higher magicks, if you only want to brush the surface of this magic, it doesn’t require much. It’s very easy, which is why people call the Old Ways children’s magic.”

Harry frowned, since he didn’t really understand half the explanation, while Tom looked bored, apparently already deciding that something invoked only during specific time and which required a lot of preparation wasn’t worth wasting time on. Tom in general looked like someone who would prefer a simple and fast way to attain his goals, waiting very impatiently if at all.

“Are they dangerous?”

Molly looked scandalised. “I wouldn’t let my children touch anything dangerous with a ten-foot pole.”

Harry believed her.

“So, we will learn parlour tricks to pass the time,” Tom loftily concluded. He wore a pinched expression, and Harry supposed it had something to do with their no learning those Dark Arts things – Tom found the name particularly thrilling and even cracked smiles of sorts when anyone mentioned them. Or were they smirks?

Frankly, Harry didn’t want to care.

Arthur shook his head. “If you don’t want to learn children’s magic, it’s all right. At the lessons you’ll also listen to the reading of out fairy tales-“ Harry lit up at that. “-be taught basic etiquette, be told about our professions and subjects to learn, our holidays, our traditions, our clothing. You’ll learn about plants and animals, as well as some geographical facts and find out the communities restricted to wizards only.”

“Cool!” Harry whispered as he changed his mind about skipping out on the whole education business. Even the Old Ways magicks sounded wicked interesting, and while he wasn’t a fan of etiquette-thingy, he loved animals and didn’t mind plants.

The Weasleys smiled at his flabbergasted but happy face.

“Depending on the ‘teacher’ of the day you might even get to visit Diagon Alley or magical garden, zoos, or greenhouses even,” promised Arthur.

“When is the next lesson?” Tom asked sharply. “I don’t suppose we study on Saturdays.”

“No, Saturdays and Sundays are one hundred per cent free – we can’t overload you with too much work.”Arthur grinned. “On Monday, though, Augusta- That is, Mrs Longbottom for you, agreed to host children at her home. You’ll get to know her grandson, too – a fine lad, a tad too shy though. You might want to help him with that.”

“Yeah, Tom doesn’t have any problem here, that’s for sure,” Harry muttered. “They won’t laugh at us, will they? The other children. Mr Dumbledore told us ‘bout those purebloods…”

Molly sighed and raised his chin with her finger. Harry looked into her warm and compassionate chocolate-coloured eyes.

“Harry, dear, I don’t know how to say it… But there will be children – and adults, let’s not forget those – who might tease you because of your blood. It’s the great disease of our community. But there are just as many people who don’t care, and you’ll easily find friends among them.” She winked.

Harry mumbled an ‘okay’ before cheering up and chirping happily, “Now that this education stuff is settled, can I go wake Ginny? She promised to show me the ghoul yesterday!”

“Oh, the ghoul!” Molly mumbled under her breath, “Should have disposed of the things long ago… Oh well, anyway, Ginny is awake already.”

“Really? But last time I peeked into her room-“

“She always places pillows under her blanket to make it seem like she’s sleeping.” Molly shook her head in discontent and rose when the last plate in the sink stopped washing itself. The woman waved her wand to make Arthur’s and Harry’s plates land in it instead. “That girl… The twins are a bad influence.”

“Hmm, at least we have a girl in the family,” Mr Weasley protested, rising, too. “The first one in generations!”

He looked very proud when he proclaimed that, and Harry liked the family just a little bit more.

Harry discovered a rule of the Weasley household: no matter what you do or where you aim to go, you end up in the kitchen.

So, he waited for only ten minutes – enduring a stilted discussion with Tom for that time – before Ginny appeared in the doorway. Her trousers, different from yesterday’s, were ripped in a few places, too, and bore smudges of dirt on her knees. Her hands looked dirty, too.

“I tripped and fell,” Ginny told her mother dismissively when Molly started kicking up a fuss.

“Your knee is bleeding! We should disinfect it immediately-“

“You disinfected it yesterday.” Ginny blinked up a few times, surprised that someone would waste time on repeating the same action day after day. She always tripped. It annoyed others, it annoyed _her_ , but she had learnt not to make a big deal out of it.

“You might feel sick-“

Ginny didn’t see the point of listening anymore, since neither of her parents ever listened to her logical conclusions. They believed that as the only Weasley girl she would vanish like a phantom if a bee stung her or if she fell off the broom, and Ginny disagreed.

So, she grabbed her new ‘brother’s’ hand and dragged him out of the kitchen before her mother fussed some more. She offered her hand to Tom, too, but the older boy only glared at the dirt stuck to it, and Ginny awkwardly retracted it.

She adored Harry: he shared her mischievous and adventurous spirit, and Ginny felt she could forge a real friendship with him, even stronger than that between her and Neville. Tom, on the other hand…

There was something off about Tom. It wasn’t a question of politeness that he lacked in regards to her. Rather, he gave her a bad vibe – like a bloodhound. Or, better yet, Cerberus, someone who guarded terrible secrets and ripped apart with his teeth anyone daring to invade his turf and his personal space. His glare scared her, too, because his eyes looked weird half the time.

She dreaded Ron’s coming home. He hadn’t been happy to find out he would have to share, and a conflict was bound to happen. Ginny only hoped that Tom wouldn’t retaliate too much.

“You shouldn’t have been so rude to your mum,” Harry told her, returning Ginny to the present time. She blushed.

“I’m just tired of repeating that this stuff doesn’t really hurt me,” Ginny explained herself. “I want to be a Quidditch player! So of course I’ll fall down the broom and get hurt more, more, more – might even get seriously injured, like it happened to the Chudley Cannons Keeper! If she coddles me, I’ll cry on the field, and everyone will be laughing at me.”

“So, you’re learning to carry on with it,” Harry summarised. She nodded, her face bright.

“Yep.”

She snuck a curious glance at him. Harry was looking around the house as they climbed the stairs to the ghoul’s living place, the attic. He frowned when a trinket or item of furniture confused him, and gasped at the brushes with magic, and laughed when he noticed something funny. She enjoyed watching his face much more than Tom’s solid countenance of disenchanted boredom.

Really, if not for her infatuation with the legendary Harry Potter, a crush would be blooming wild right now!

Like the rest of the house, the attic and the ghoul disappointed Tom. The place was stuffy and cluttered just like the entire house, and while Tom didn’t mind the darkness and the gloom, he minded the cobwebs and insects crawling all over the attic. Some packages and chests and trunks occasionally shook or moved, and Tom felt defenceless against the unknown creatures dwelling there, which only further soured his mood.

What was worse, when he hissed Harry that, the other boy only replied with, “Well, lower your freakishly high expectations, and nothing in the world would disappoint you.”

Harry didn’t seem to understand that if you expected nothing, you got nothing – as simple as that. So Tom aimed to grasp it all, and when he couldn’t… Well, he never claimed to have an easy character.

Back to the ghoul…

The creature disgusted him. Tom expected ghouls to be macabre and fascinating and hold secrets of the afterlife and necromantic arts, but in reality it turned out to be an artless creature which only wailed, whimpered, and banged the pipes to remind others of its existence.

Useless. Disappointing. Repelling.

Tom wanted out of this house, because his opinion was dropping so fast that by the end of the day he would probably escape and run in the direction of where a _real_ wizarding family lived. Someone with dignity and self-respect, someone Tom wouldn’t be embarrassed to claim kinship with.

He hatched a plan for that, too.

That daily ‘school’ of amateurs provided Tom with a splendid opportunity to mix with scions of worthier families – and eventually convince them to take him in. He would drag Harry with him, most likely, since the other boy appealed to Tom in his own way. Harry wouldn’t refuse if Tom blackmailed him with all the knowledge he held over the other’s head.

Actually, Tom would blackmail Harry anyway: he didn’t appreciate being ignored, especially not in favour of some chit who had not even half of Tom’s wits.

Yes, Tom would show everyone who the main man of the ‘family’ was. And the family included only two people.

“I am perfection,” Tom solemnly told the ghoul without boasting. The creature whimpered in response.

“I can’t believe that Rufus Screamgeur managed to wheedle a ban on casting Dark Magic in Knockturn,” Molly said with a shake of her head. Tom hid just behind the staircase in a comfortable alcove made specifically for the purpose of spying on the parents in the kitchen, from the Weaslette’s words. A cookery book sat innocently on his lap in case they caught him – which wouldn’t happen, of course.

“I’ve always told you that ol’ Screamgeur’s the best of the Law Enforcement lot. And, well, Amelia Bones, but she’s going to retire soon, I hear.”

“That man’s a politician and I don’t trust him one bit.” Worried notes crawled into the woman’s tone.

“Well, he’s an Auror, too, and rarely dabbles into _real_ politics-“ Arthur contradicted before the woman cut him off.

“A well-disguised politician. This is even worse.”

_There are no_ ill _-disguised politicians, because such are lowly blighters dabbling in the arts, not the true masters,_ Tom thought smugly. He would either be a politician or a warrior and then a politician – either way, when Tom controlled the world, he wouldn’t make mistakes himself.

“You’re awfully cynical as far as Ministry is concerned,” Arthur remarked after taking a loud sip of whatever liquid he drank.

Molly scoffed, just as loudly. “Ministerial matters would make a cynic even out of a house elf. You could try to find a better job while you’re at it, by the way. The only reason I tolerate your profession is because your department doesn’t concern themselves with politics.”

“That’s what you say,” Arthur mumbled, making Tom’s ears perk up, before throwing the most pathetic attempt as changing topics that Tom had ever seen. “Um, how about our new boys?”

“Harry and Ginny seem such good friends already.” Molly sighed dreamily and Tom heard the chair creak as she shifted weight. “I saw them out de-gnoming the garden mere minutes ago – they look so sweet and homely together already. Can’t help but match-make them!”

Something snapped in Tom at the words, and he scowled. He loathed moments when the attention drifted away from him – unless he specifically arranged it for a dastardly scheme of sorts himself – and the appearance of a couple in the household would do exactly that. He had to talk to Harry. Tom pulled at the strings perfectly, and Harry would hate the girl by the end of their talk.

“Right,” Arthur said dubiously, and Tom knew he had an ally there. “What about Tom? He seems very quiet, clever, and polite.”

Tom smirked, part of his bad mood vanishing.

They had no idea how clever he was.

“Oh, he is. Asked me a lot about magic, he did, and Dark Magic, too-“

“If he is still interested by the time he goes to Hogwarts, I could give him my mother’s grimoire,” Arthur suddenly offered.

An enraged silence followed before Molly bellowed, “You will not saddle a child with that vile book!”

Tom ricked sneaking a glance out, figuring that they would be too furious with each other to notice him anyway, and wasn’t mistaken: while the pale colour of Arthur’s cheeks stood out in the slightly dark place, Molly’s face blazed with red.

A scrap of long-forgotten information in the mental recesses of his head supplied Tom with an answer: grimoire – a handbook each member of a proclaimed Dark family started wherein they wrote their observations, ideas, opinions, inventions, spells, rituals, etc. The Black family the ‘twins Hadrian and Thomas’ descended from belonged to such, too, and Tom wanted to buy himself a book like that at one point, too – but it seemed he would earlier acquire another one’s instead.

“Cedrella Black was my mother,” Arthur started. Anger laced his voice. “She wasn’t as bad as other Blacks are, and I want to pass down her knowledge, because this way I’m passing down the memory of her. I’ve come to terms with the fact that none of our children are interested in exploring their ties with the Blacks, but if Tom expresses a desire to do so – in a few years I’ll gift him with the book.”

Or Tom could talk to the man and speed up the process..

Or he could steal it for himself. Surely, Harry wouldn’t say ‘no’ to an adventure?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your reviews! <3 
> 
> This chapter's already been on ff net and, sadly, there are no plans for chapter 6 right now, since I'll be concentrating on finishing In a World Gone Astray first. All the progress/info on the updates is posted on my profile here!


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